Farewell to facebook

It was all so good at the start, you posted your photo, caught up with some distant friends and joined a fun group or two. Who could forget such classics like "i go out of my way to step on an especially crunchy leaf" and the equally happy and friendly " i want to punch slow walking people in the head"

It was the best of times exploring this fun new world of social networking. It was My Space but for us older people who still used long words. Some people would complain about it and say "No i am never going to go on Stalkerbook" and then the next week you had a friend request from them. Oh how we laughed as we tagged each other photos and joined together in our fun world of sharing and caring.

Now we had an excuse to never go to another travel slide night or have to ask to see our friends babies photos. Our interteste could all be summed up with simple click of the 'like' button. Then the games appeared and they were fun. Like the Scrabble before the evil overlord of Hasbro came and took it back

and wasn't poking fun? Innocent. Pure. Simple. Fun

then it all went bad.

so very very bad.

People you had avoided for years popped up, you had to start joining groups so you wouldn't offend people and in return they spammed you with event after event after event after event. That is of course when they weren't asking you to look after their sheep, or send them some loot or how much money they had won on Poker. Now its all become a spiraling mess of befriending people you never really liked anyway who keep telling you everything you never wanted to hear any way and the status updates got more and more banal or in the extreme, messages of love between partners who needed to take it some where else.

then...

then our Mothers joined.

The end is here people, your mother is on facebook. Now we see ahead of us are constant mother comments after our confessions of debauchery, the world of our tagged youth is now open to them as is the access to the chat. It's bad enough we have to speak on the phone now they are going to find you online!

People think the security and Facebooks scant lack of interest it is the problem. And as Google street view becomes goggle wi-fi audit and I unlock my creepystalker badge on 4square I am not in the least worried about that. I am worried that my Mother is slowly befriending all of my friends and slowly becoming part of my social network. Where will this end? Who knows how many events she has rsvped to already!

Everyone knows Mothers should just be for Christmas and occasional Mothers Days when you are trying to make your sister look bad. It was hard enough when i got the "its your Mother on HER mobile" call. Now we all lost our "you weren't home" excuse for calling. So, she doesn't know where the caps button IS ON HER PHONE but hey she has it with her and on all the time. No excuse not to call her now.

Our Mothers are on Facebook and their numbers are growing. The largest growth group of new Facebook users are over 55 year old women. So be prepared, Aunty Jill will be also looking at all of your tagged photos. And the rest of the Bridge club. You know what they are going to be talking about at afternoon tea tomorrow. As they sit round chatting and LOLing about what you have been doing.

Be prepared as a maternal tsunami of super informed know-alls marching to the best of the communication super highway, ready to dispense advice, washes over us all. Be prepared for your mother issues to be relayed back to you as pithy retorts to your updates. And you do know all posts will be signed "love, Mum"

And where does it go from here? Look for your Mothers myspace page, their you tube channel with all your favourite home videos and of course their twitter accounts where they will dispense advice 140 characters (131 once you have factored out "love, Mum" each tweet) And of course the inevitable invite to "Insert names Mother is best" fan page. What next? She'll discover skype!

It was all so good at the start

For those wanting to leave Facebook and reclaim their sanity. Instructions here

the end is well and truly nigh.(1)

(1) and we all thought Zombies (or Wombats) would be the reason for our doom